


Return

by unkissed



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Consensual Infidelity, Daddy!Draco, M/M, POV Second Person, Uncle Theo, parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-12
Updated: 2014-11-12
Packaged: 2018-02-25 02:21:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2605058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unkissed/pseuds/unkissed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your love was never sedate and pretty. Your love was always a garish and tortured work of art.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Return

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Things we lost in the fire](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2355089) by [ColorfulStabwound](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColorfulStabwound/pseuds/ColorfulStabwound). 



> The events in this story are inspired by and directly relate to "Things We Lost in the Fire" by ColorfulStabwound. Some of the dialogue is taken directly from it. 
> 
> Gratitude and credit goes out to ColorfulStabwound for inspiration, support, and friendship.
> 
> To Draco with the Dior cufflinks, who is the yummiest DILF around.

You always knew that you’d cry if you ever saw Draco’s arms around another boy.  You also knew that it would be completely unfair of you to be jealous. Draco had given all of himself to you and only you.  You can’t say the same – not by a long shot. 

 

And here you are, weeping silently, watching him like you’re not really there, like it’s happening in an alternate universe. You’ve no right to be afraid of losing Draco, because he’s not really yours to lose.  He was never really yours.  No matter what both your hearts said otherwise, the ring he wore on his left hand did not bind him to you, but to another.  And while you watch him, it becomes more apparent and truer than ever that Draco belongs to somebody else – to the person he’s holding in his arms.

 

It does nothing to diminish your love for him. In fact, you love him more. To see him give his love so wholly and unconditionally is a beautiful thing to behold.  You see a light sparkling in his eyes that you’ve never seen before. Part of you wishes that you could inspire that light.  But another part of you knows that nobody but this boy has ever or will ever make Draco’s eyes gleam so adoringly.

 

Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy is almost twenty-four hours old.  He’s been cradled and cooed over and held by several sets of hands already.  But this is the first time that Draco is holding his son. And you thank the gods for bringing you here to witness it.

 

 

 

~@~

 

 

It is Tuesday, the thirteenth of September, in the year two-thousand-and-five, at approximately eleven in the morning, when an elegant-looking owl taps on your window.  You don’t recognize her right away, but when you divest the bird of it’s scroll, you realize it is Tiffany, Astoria Malfoy’s owl.

 

 

_Theodore,_

_The baby is coming._

_I feel that if you were here, Draco just might stick around through labor to see the birth of his son.  My contractions started at breakfast and I’m progressing rather slowly.  The midwife expects Scorpius will make his debut by this evening. It figures that Draco’s offspring would take his sweet time coming to his own birthday party. Probably making sure his hair is just right._

_Anyway, you have fair warning.  I’m feeling alright now. I can hardly tell I’m in labor, except for the occasional debilitating, sharp pains every so often, which I’m quite accustomed to, having been married to Draco for so long.   But I expect things will get ugly as the day wears on, and I assume Draco will need his hand held through the ordeal, wilting violet that he is.  Come find us in the West wing of Malfoy Manor._

_Draco still doesn’t know that I spoke to you a few weeks ago about being Scorpius’ godfather, nor does he know I’m sending you this letter. You’re a smart fellow, and I know you’ll keep it that way._

_Astoria_

_P.S. I’m telling you this, not so that you can whisk Draco away.  I need him to be home for this.  I am still willing to keep up my end of the bargain.  I’m counting on you to keep up yours._

Even though you half expected to get an owl informing you of the imminent arrival of Draco’s son, it still surprises you that his _wife_ is inviting you to be there for the event.  You doubt that you’ll be permitted into the actual room, not that you want to be anywhere near there while it’s happening.  But it is still a pleasantly surprising invitation. 

 

You think about it while you have your coffee and toast.  And the more you think about it, the more you don’t like the idea.  You wanted the invitation to come from Draco.  If he really wanted you there, he would have asked you. You feel apprehensive about barging into this very private family event unannounced and seemingly uninvited. You wonder if Draco would even appreciate you being there.  You’re not even sure you can stomach being at Malfoy Manor while the woman, to whom the love of your life is married, gives birth to his child.  The only thing worse would have been attending their wedding – you weren’t even invited.

 

Before you know it, it’s already one in the afternoon and you’ve emptied two cups of coffee, smoked half a packet of fags, and written five pages in your journal.  You still haven’t decided if you’re going to Malfoy Manor or not. You resign not to go unless Draco invites you himself.

 

Then you wait.  You pass the time reading a collection of Keats poems in the bath until your toes are like prunes.  Still no word from Draco.  You curl up on the couch with your cat, Dorian Gray, and listen to both sides of _Disintegration_ on your phonograph.  Still no word from Draco.  You go for a short stroll to pick up some milk, and when you get back, an owl is waiting in your window, perched on the rails of the fire escape, hooting softly next to Helvetica as if gossiping with her.  It’s Tiffany again.

 

 

_T:_

_Come now, or never step foot into Malfoy Manor again._

_A_

_PS: If Draco leaves to see you today, our agreement is off._

You had made a promise to Astoria – you would be godfather to Scorpius and be a presence in both his life and his father’s life. Draco would be able to see you, but you’d always send him home in the morning to be with his family. This was Astoria’s plan to keep her little family whole – to keep Draco happy, to keep Draco from running away with you again.  It seemed unfair that Draco had no knowledge of and no bearing on this deal.  But you’d agreed to it because it meant you could return to Draco. It meant you could be a part of his life again.

 

 

It seems like you’d be more of a home-wrecker if you stay at your loft in Southend, so you resign to leave for Malfoy Manor. You scrawl a quick, unsigned note letting Astoria know you’re coming.  But you don’t leave right away.  You come up with every excuse to keep yourself home for a little bit longer, because you hadn’t realized until now how terrified you are of seeing Draco again. You don’t know if he’ll still accept you.  You wouldn’t be able to stand seeing him if he’s playing the part of the dutiful, doting husband. You’d exchanged letters and fire-calls during your separation, but you’d given each other lots of space – space for Draco to take up his rightful place as head of the Malfoy family, and space for you to move on with your life.  Love went unspoken again.  And all that time and distance between you had allowed doubts to infiltrate your mind. You still don’t expect him to take you back – not when he’s just had a child with his wife, and not after you’d spent nearly a year shacked up with Pansy.  You still haven’t told him yet.  You really should, but now is not the time.

 

 

It’s already four.  You’ve run out of cigarettes, so you pop down to the shop on the corner.  You pass a girl on the street, walking with a baby strapped to the front of her body with some sort of fancy fabric wrap thing.  The child is perhaps a year old – you’ve no idea really, since your experience with children is nonexistent.  The baby drops the little plushie rattle it had been clutching and it falls at your feet. Of course, you pick it up because you’re not a jerk.  You think you’re doing the right thing by returning the toy to the chubby hands that are clearly reaching desperately for it.  The girl, presumably the mother, snatches it from you instead and thanks you with a tight smile as she stashes the toy in her bag.  The kid starts crying of course.  You must look a bit confused because she offers you an explanation, though she doesn’t really owe you one.  “Germs,” she says, and walks on.

 

You’ve had more experience with adults than babies and you can guess with decent accuracy that the girl couldn’t have been much older than sixteen.  You think back to how useless you were at sixteen and you can’t fathom how anyone that age could actually have their shit together enough to raise a child. Clearly, she’s got enough of her shit together to know not to give a baby a toy that’s fallen onto the filthy streets of London.  You’re twenty-five, and you should’ve had your shit together enough to know that too. Though it makes sense in hindsight. Hindsight probably means nothing when raising a child.

 

And it is that exact moment when you come to a stark realization and rush to Malfoy Manor - _Fuck. Draco is going to need A LOT of help._

~@~

 

 

 

Draco needs you now.  Maybe you can’t offer any insight into how to actually care for a baby, but you can give him loads and loads of moral support. Draco needs to grow up now and you know it’s going to be hard for him.  You’ve never really grown up, so you can only imagine how frightening it is to face the responsibility of fatherhood.  Draco doesn’t need to call for you.  You still love him with every ounce of your soul and it matters little if he can return that love to you now.  You love him enough to support him during what will be one of the most trying times of his life.

 

 

You’ve been sitting in a darkened corner of Draco’s private rooms for nearly two hours when he comes in looking completely haggard. His shirt is wrinkled, the sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, and the top three buttons are undone. If you didn’t know better, you would’ve thought he delivered the baby himself.

 

He doesn’t realize you’re there yet, and you wait before making yourself known.  You want to watch him while his guard is down, free of pretenses and uninhibited. And maybe you’d given up the right to see him like this a long time ago, but you steal those covert glances anyway because you suddenly realize that you’d been starving for a glimpse of him. As exhausted as he looks, he is still beautiful, right down to the way his sweat dampens his hair and makes it curl up at the ends.  You want to jump out of your seat and seize him in an embrace.  But instead, you stand quietly and follow him motionlessly with your eyes while he flings open the doors to the balcony, lights a fag, and relishes the smoke in his lungs.  You are only mildly surprised that he’d carried on the habit of smoking even without you to steal cigarettes from.  He tilts his head back to exhale a white plume from his mouth.  Your own breath catches in your throat as you admire the elegant curve of his neck and you ache to reacquaint your lips with all of his graceful lines.  But more than anything, you want to feel him nestled within your arms, where he belongs.

 

When you can’t stand it any longer, you finally speak from the cover of the shadows.  “Nasty habit you’ve got there,” you say.  He snaps around and looks at you with such disbelief and surprise that you have to inwardly laugh.  You smile in the way only Draco can make you smile, like a silly, lovesick schoolboy.

 

And Draco, refined as ever, simply smirks at you despite the obvious elation that lights up his silver eyes.  “I learn from the best,” he says softly and regards you from too far away.  He’s playing it cool, but you know him.  He’s itching to close that distance between you, whether it’s across a room or across a country.

 

“I’m a horrible teacher; didn’t anyone ever tell you that?”  You’re not so collected as he, nor can you remain patient.  You dislodge yourself from the wall.  After one step towards him, he approaches you too, as if that one step had been all that was needed to initiate the gravitational pull between the two of you. When you come together, it’s Draco that takes you in his arms, though you always imagined it would be the other way around – you admittedly had daydreamed about your reunion many a lonely night.

 

You had missed him more than you wanted to, and you don’t realize how terribly you had been missing him until you finally have him. Within his all-encompassing embrace, every one of your doubts melts away and you know by the ache in your chest that he never loved you any less than the day he left you.  Someday it will make you feel guilty that you’d doubted him and that you’d strayed.  But right now, all you want to do is hold him.  Your arms go around his middle and you fit together like puzzle pieces once lost.

 

You never want to be apart ever again. Though you’d shed countless tears during your separation, you’ve still some crying left to do. Your cheek is wet when you press it against his.  His comes away damp when he pulls back to look at you and you realize it’s not just your tears glistening on his face.

 

He doesn’t say anything to you. But you read every one of his thoughts on the crease of his brow and the glimmer in his eyes and the curve of his lips as he brushes away your tears with the pad of his thumb. You don’t need words to confirm that he’d desperately wanted you here.

 

“Is it over?” you ask, “Has he arrived?” You’re talking about labor and delivery, but both of you know those questions embody so much more.

 

“It’s only just begun,” he answers softly with a small nod.  You can see all of Draco’s worries and apprehensions and hopes in his sad little smile.

 

When you kiss him, it is a promise. You pledge your love and your devotion to him. You dearly hope he knows that he won’t have to go through this alone.

 

But if he hadn’t known it from that endless kiss, you tell him when you put him to bed.  He’s already halfway to dreamland when you press your lips his forehead and say, “I could be Scorpius’ godfather if you’ll have me.”

 

He replies with a sleepy grin, “I wouldn’t trust anyone else with that title.”

 

“I’ll check on you lot tomorrow morning,” you say with a reassuring smile of your own, “Rest well.  You’ll need it, daddy.”

 

 

When you close the door to Draco’s chambers, there is a house elf waiting for you.  “Mistress is allowing sir to see the young master now.  Mistress would like sir to follow Tink.”

 

You’re a bit taken aback, but you can hardly make assumptions about Astoria anymore at this point. She’s been surprising you with every move in the game and you wonder if this one isn’t selfishly calculated. Maybe she’s just being, you daresay, _nice_.

 

 

Scorpius is impossibly small, despite Astoria’s insistence that he’s a big baby.  You’d imagine any size child seems huge when one has to expel him from one’s body. As you cradle him carefully, scared to death that you’re doing it wrong, he slumbers in your arms. You see on Scorpius’ face that same innocence that plays on Draco’s closed eyes when he sleeps. And you start to feel that maybe all of the separation and heartache had been worth it because it allowed this special little person to be brought into the world.

 

 

~@~

 

 

“I don’t know who’s cried more – you or Scorpius,” Draco jokes as he sits in a plush armchair, cradling his infant son.

 

You chuckle softly and dab away your tears with the sleeve of your jumper.  “If you could see what I see right now, you’d be crying too.”

 

“What do you see, Theodore,” he asks from across the nursery.

 

“A different person,” is all you say with a fond smile.

 

Draco gazes down at Scorpius. “I didn’t mean to change. My father – I can’t imagine him being any different before I was born.  He didn’t let me change him.  But I…,” he bites his bottom lip, as if stifling a sob, “I can never be the same again.” He looks up at you with so much hopelessness in his eyes and now the tears are flowing silently. “ _We_ can never be the same again.”

 

You move to be next to him, but you can’t get as close as you’d like.   You crouch down by the armchair to look at the baby sleeping in Draco’s arms. “You’re right. You’re not the same – you’re better.” You carefully lean over and kiss Draco gently on the lips.  “We can be better too.”

 

He sighs against the kiss.  “How?  I need to be here. For Scorpius.” He looks back down at his son. “I produced an heir – I thought my job was done.  But it’s only just started.” His eyes meet yours and they look resolute despite their glassy appearance.  “I want to be a father to him.  I want to be better to him than my father was to me.”

 

“You will be.  I’ve no doubt,” you say. “And I’ll be here to help you.”

 

He smiles and kisses you.  By the way his lips linger, you know that he’d been worried that you wouldn’t return today, or any day for that matter. Ironic, considering you had thought Draco wouldn’t take you back.

 

The door to the nursery opens and Astoria comes rolling in on a wheelchair wearing an elaborately embroidered brocade dressing gown. “Scorpius has two daddies – how precious,” she drawls without any real malice. 

 

You and Draco pull away from each other like you’ve been caught, but Astoria seems unfazed, though the healer pushing the wheelchair looks positively scandalized.  You know Astoria is a good actress and never lets her true emotions show unless she wants you to see them.  It would make you sick to see Draco kissing her, and you don’t have to try hard to imagine how she feels about what she’s just seen.  So you feel guilty for kissing her husband.

 

“Oh don’t stop on my account,” she says flippantly, “But I’m going to have to ask you to take it outside.  Scorpius has to nurse every two hours and my sore nipples and I are afraid it’s feeding time.  Again.” She sighs as she unties the sash around her dressing gown and you are already halfway towards the door at the mention of sore nipples.  She gestures at Draco with her arms.  “Bring him to mummy, please Draco.”

 

“But he’s sleeping,” Draco protests.

 

“So wake him.  Unless you want our son to be malnourished, in which case, by all means let him starve and sleep the day away.”  She’s rather sarcastic for someone who just had a baby. 

 

Motherhood clearly hadn’t changed _her_ all that much.  Little do you know that Astoria will keep sending Draco on precisely these sorts of unwarranted guilt trips under the guise of concern for the wellbeing of their son.

 

Draco rolls his eyes and carefully places Scorpius in Astoria’s arms.  The movement rouses the baby and he starts to make little noises of protest. “Drink up, little man,” Draco mutters under his breath, “Just like your mother used to.”  Astoria pierces him with an unamused glare.

 

 

What you also don’t know at this point is that Astoria may have given up drinking for a year, but once Scorpius is weaned, she’ll hit the bottle harder than her son.  Both you and Draco will feel the weight of your guilt as you watch her self-destruct. She’ll spiral out of control after Draco asks for the divorce they’d already known was coming years prior and she will hurl every piece of heirloom china that they’d inherited as a married couple into the lake.  And when she starts dating a notorious former death eater who’d done time in Azkaban for war crimes, you’ll wonder if it is her own innate self-destructive tendencies that brought her down, and not anything you or Draco did to unintentionally wrong her.

 

But that is all many years down the line. And rest assured that, no matter how fractured this family seems, it is more whole than anything you, Draco, or Astoria have ever had with your own families.  It is all because of a little boy named Scorpius who has brought you all together.

 

 

 

~@~

 

 

You had been welcomed to Malfoy Manor for brunch every Sunday since Scorpius was born.  You no longer feel like you’re intruding.  Everyone seems quite happy to have you there. Narcissa is pleased to not be in the middle of Draco and Astoria’s bickering for a change.  You, however, get to play monkey-in-the-middle in her stead, fielding complaints from both husband and wife.  Astoria seems glad to have somebody to gripe to who won’t automatically take Draco’s side.  You love this man, but you will always be the first one to point out when he’s wrong. Scorpius seems to like having you around too.  You wouldn’t dream of having him anywhere else but perched on your knee and playing with your eggs while you try to eat them, even though his nanny constantly tries to whisk him off to the nursery to leave the adults in peace.  You know that Scorpius is the only one keeping you all relatively civil.

 

“Sleeping through the night yet?” you ask, as you have every other time you’ve come for brunch. 

 

It seems like a harmless question, one that everyone seems to ask new parents.  But you’re asking for different, ulterior reasons.  You had told Draco that he could spend the night at your place as soon as Scorpius could sleep through the night.  When you both agreed to this, you hadn’t known that babies sleeping through the night was a myth. 

 

“Not yet,” says Astoria, not sounding the least bit annoyed by this fact.  You, however, have to bite your lip hard to keep from swearing.

 

“It’s been six months.  Obviously, you need to change what you’re doing because it isn’t working,” says Draco, huffing superiorly behind his coffee cup.

 

Astoria quirks her brow and leans forward. “What makes you think it isn’t working? Scorpius sleeps perfectly fine.” She turns to the baby and coos in a high-pitched voice, “Isn’t that right, Scorpius? Mummy’s special little boy is a good sleeper.”

 

Scorpius giggles and throws a chubby fistful of your scrambled eggs at his mother, and Astoria thinks it’s the sweetest thing ever as she picks egg out of her hair.

 

“How many times does he wake up at night? Twice?” Draco asks with an accusatory tone.

 

“Sometimes three times,” Astoria admits, “but it really isn’t as bad as you think.”

 

“Three times?” Draco looks like Astoria is personally trying to offend him with Scorpius’ sleeping habits.

 

“What do you care, Draco?  It’s not like you’re losing any sleep,” Astoria scoffs, “I’m the one that minds the baby at night while you’re blissfully unaware of how many times your son wakes up.”

 

Draco narrows his eyes at the mother of his child, unaffected by Astoria’s veiled stab at his lack of nighttime parenting. “You really don’t look like you’re losing sleep either.  We _do_ have a twenty-four-hour nanny.”

 

As if said nanny isn’t sitting nearby knitting a baby jumper, Astoria waves her hand dismissively and says, “Cecily’s work starts the moment Scorpius wakes in the morning and ends as soon as he goes to bed at night.  I’m the one who’s there when he stirs in the middle of the night.  He doesn’t even wake up all the way.  Before he even cries, I’m right there, nursing him back down.”

 

Draco quirks a brow with disbelief. “How do you know that he’s awake if you’re up even before he cries?  That’s just impossible.”

 

“He sleeps next to me,” Astoria says matter-of-factly.

 

“What?” Draco’s stoic expression reveals a hint of surprise.

 

Narcissa points out, ever polite despite her words, “If I may interject, dearest, you’d know this if you actually slept in the same room as your wife.” She smiles graciously.

 

Astoria straightens in her chair and smirks triumphantly.

 

“Well, I don’t like it.”  Draco pushes his breakfast plate away and the house elf rushes to clear it away.  “You’ll smother him if you’re so close all the time.”

 

Astoria is quick to answer.  “It’s perfectly safe.  He sleeps in a little bed that attaches to mine.  All I have to do is roll over and offer him my breast and we both fall back asleep.”

 

Draco admits, though unwillingly so, “Well, I’m glad you have our son’s safety in mind.”  Then his tone is stern again.  “But that’s not what I meant.  I meant that you’ll ruin him by coddling him too much.” 

 

“You know your father said the same exact thing to me about you.”  Narcissa gives Draco a pointed look and Draco appears unsettled.  “I wouldn’t say you’re ruined.  No man is infallible, but any of your faults can hardly be blamed on our closeness.”

 

You’ve been quiet during the whole conversation despite having started it.  But now you can’t help but steer it back towards your original intentions because you’re terribly selfish and you’ve been patient for months.  “So if Scorpius is perfectly fine without Draco at night, could Blaise and I perhaps borrow him this evening?  For a bit of a bloke’s night out?  Nothing crazy.  Just dinner in London and maybe a few drinks after.  I’ll have him back by morning – promise.”

 

Astoria sniffs, “You’re asking _me_?  I’m hardly Draco’s keeper.”  Then she mutters under her breath, “And it’s not like you’ve ever asked my permission to take my husband away before.”

 

Before the scene can get ugly, Narcissa swoops in to mitigate the tension.  “I think that’s a lovely idea, Theodore.  I’m sure Draco could use a break from daddy duty.”  She turns to Astoria and suggests, “I’m sure you’d like a break as well. Why don’t you visit your sister this evening?  I’d be thrilled to spend some one-on-one time with my grandson. If Scorpius won’t take the bottle, we could owl an on-call wet nurse.”

 

Both Draco and Astoria quietly turn the idea over in their heads and for once, they agree on something. 

 

 

~@~

 

 

What begins as a lovely dinner at an upscale nouvelle French cuisine restaurant, quickly devolves into a full-on bender when Graham and Greg meet you, Draco and Blaise at a pub in muggle London. But Draco isn’t drinking. Maybe it’s fatherhood that has him acting so responsibly for once while the rest of you knock back pint after pint. You’re a little tipsy by the end of the night, but not nearly as drunk as your companions, who pack into a black taxi cab and leave you alone with Draco on the sidewalk.

 

“So…”  You turn to Draco with a devious little smirk and slowly curl your fingers around the lapel of his jacket.  “Back to my place, then?” 

 

Maybe you owe your forwardness to the buzz you’ve got going on right now.  A year ago, Draco might have thought it cute.  But tonight is not like any other night you’ve found yourself together after some revelry in the city.  That’s because you haven’t really _been with_ Draco for quite some time.  Since your return, you’d been relatively respectful of Astoria and to Draco’s marriage to her – a year ago, away from England, you could pretend that she didn’t exist and conveniently forget that Draco was married.  But you are deeply entrenched in the Malfoy family now and you feel guilty when you so much as kiss Draco.  So you hadn’t done much more than snuggle when you were alone together.

 

Draco is apprehensive.  You know it even before he asks to walk over to your flat rather than side-along.  You can see it in his eyes and in his tentative smile.  As you stroll along the Thames, watching the city lights glimmering on the black water, the only thing that’s keeping you from falling apart is his hand in yours.  And even that gives you little reassurance.  You keep waiting for the moment that Draco breaks the silence and tells you he can’t do this.

 

When he finally speaks, you’re crossing Jubilee Bridge. He stops and pierces you with his silver eyes – eyes that see right into your soul. 

 

“I need you to know something, Theodore,” he says, and you swallow hard, bracing yourself for the killing blow. He must see how worried you are because he takes your face gently in his hands, kisses your forehead, and mutters, “It’s nothing bad – stop your pouting.”  You chuckle softly and he continues.  “I need you to know what you are to me, and what you are not.”

 

That last bit scares you.  Maybe Draco is going to set some ground rules - some boundaries. You know what it was like to love one another uninhibitedly but you also know that it is impossible in this situation.

 

He affirms, as much with his voice as with his hands holding your face.  “You are _not_ my mistress.  You are _not_ my secret lover. You are _not_ a piece of arse I take on the side or even a fuck buddy. Do you understand?”

 

You can’t stand the way he’s looking at you and your eyes fall closed by the second assertion.  But it does nothing to stop the tears.  Your fingers encircle his wrists while his hold on you is steadfast.

 

“Do you _understand_ , Theodore?” he asks you again, forcing you to open your eyes with the firmness of his voice.

 

You can’t even answer.  Your breath hitches on a sob and you pull his hands away from you. Still, all you can manage is a weepy nod.

 

“No you _don’t_ understand,” he says, softly but frustrated.  “I love you,” he declares, and though it isn’t a new revelation, it still makes your heart flutter every time he says it.  “You aren’t any of those things because you are _mine_ and I am yours.”

 

You snake your arms around him and kiss him hard. Hard enough that it pushes him back against the rails of the pedestrian bridge.  When he kisses you back, his fingers lace with yours and nothing else needs to be said because you both understand now.  And all of London disappears.

 

 

 

~@~

 

 

When you open your eyes, you are at your flat, and you are impressed that Draco remembered it well enough to apparate the both of you here.  You had cleaned it in preparation this afternoon because you’d been hopeful.  You are thankful that you did, because it means you have less to trip over when you stumble backwards towards your bedroom as Draco kisses your breath away.

 

You don’t remember the last time you’d seen Draco so anxious.  He’s yanking at his own clothes with little regard for each designer piece of menswear as he lets them fall to the floor.  The delicious sight of a desperate Draco is enough to make you shed your shirt and trousers in record time.

 

Sooner than you can imagine, he has your naked body pinned to the bed with his own nude form and he kisses you frantically enough to make your mouth bleed when he scrapes your bottom lip with his teeth. If Draco hadn’t already made you hard when he declared that you were his, the taste of your own blood in his mouth would more than do the trick.

 

You know Draco to be one to take his sweet time, to let things progress and unfold like a flower slowly blossoming – each careful caress is a petal unfurling to kiss the moonlight. But tonight, _sweet_ and _slow_ are not in Draco’s lexicon, and neither are they in yours. 

 

It has been at least fifteen months since you last made love to Draco.  Half of those months, you filled with another.  But for Draco, nine of those months had been empty, and six of those months had been an agonizing grace period.

 

You feel every agonizing day of those fifteen months for Draco as he hungrily reacquaints his mouth with every inch of your skin, leaving no part of you unkissed. 

 

And because it is becoming your thing, guilt is preventing you from enjoying this as much as you should.  Though you didn’t actively seek out a rebound, you didn’t actively stop it when Pansy came to New York.  You regret very little of your time with her, but you wish you hadn’t allowed yourself to think that Draco would forget you.  You had no real reason to lose faith, other than your own self-depreciating pessimism.

 

It’s possible that he senses _your_ apprehension now, for he grants you a breath, and you use it to say what you should have said months ago.  “I’m sorry I ever doubted you.”

 

“I’m sorry I made you take a leap of faith,” Draco replies.

 

Forgiveness goes unspoken.  Maybe it’s because it will take some work to truly get there for both of you.  In a few weeks, you will tell him everything you are sorry for.  But for now, this is enough.

 

 

When you sink into him at long last, you are whole again, though you feel like you are breaking apart. Fifteen months has rendered Draco’s body less receptive to you, and he feels nearly the way he did when you first divested him of his last shred of innocence on that fateful day in Morocco. You pull reverent, blissful moans from his ruddy lips - You devour each one greedily and make him give you more with each firm thrust of your hips.  He nearly growls when he captures your heart between his teeth and makes the threads of your very thin dignity unfurl with his blunt nails scraping down your spine, leaving red lines that he will retrace into well-worn pathways in the nights to come.

 

On the surface, it looks like you’re fucking hard and dirty, like the most depraved little demons in London.  You grapple with each other in a desperate, slippery attempt to find the perfect angle that makes the two of you cry out with primal abandon. You fuck with complete disregard for each other’s pain threshold and for the limitations of anatomy.  

 

But if one could look deeper, they’d see that you are shattering each other to pieces just so you can fit the broken fragments back together in novel, more beautiful ways.  Each broken shard slips into place with each wet, carnal slide until a mosaic is created that depicts your love perfectly. Your love was never sedate and pretty. Your love was always a garish and tortured work of art.

 

The picture that you both make is one of possession and violent conquest, of agonizing need and selfish desire, of fingers that take without express permission, of mouths that devour with insatiable hunger. You can’t help but fuck like you want to destroy each other, like you don’t love each other. And it’s because you have evolved to require pain to reaffirm your love.  That’s not to say you can’t ever be gentle with each other. It is quite the contrary. You remember when you and Draco would make the sweetest love, taking each other with gentle reverence – that is the way you were, more often than not.  But for now, you are each taking back what’s yours, and you can’t do that without breaking one another.

 

In the end, you find yourself behind him, covering the cygnine curve of his back with your body like a protective shroud. Draco is reaching back with his fingers clenched in your hair, pulling your head down over his shoulder – the shoulder that you’ve decorated with rings of pink bite marks. To match those marks, your cruel kisses have left purple splotches on the pale canvas of his skin. To complete the masterpiece, you inflict bruises on his upper thighs while you drive into him so hard that your bones crash together.

 

You fill the room with a symphony of smacking flesh, blissfully anguished moans, and a string of strangled curses that you don’t mean.   You each add your signature to your collaborative creation as you come in perfect synchronicity.

 

It will be days before you can allow yourself to wash Draco’s sweat and semen out of your sheets because you can’t bloody live without the animal scent of him now that you’ve become reacquainted with it. And you will swathe your body in his smell and in the memory of his touch while you cry yourself to sleep tonight, alone in your bed, alone with the realization that you still want more even though _this_ is the most you can reasonably hope for.  Draco had told you that you’re not his _mistress_ but you can’t help but feel a little bit like a whore he’s left behind.

 

You had promised that you’d send Draco home in the morning.  You never promised that you’d send him home in one piece.  You take sick satisfaction in this.  But it also somehow reassures you.

 

While you lie in bed partaking of several cigarettes in quick succession, filling the emptiness left in Draco’s wake with smoke, you relish the ache in every muscle he had commanded. And you know that he’s going back to Malfoy Manor only half a person. 

 

Because you are the other half.

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to know more about that deal between Astoria and Theodore, read my story, "Proposition".


End file.
